Diary of a Lost Girl
by Love Gordon
Summary: In darkest Azkaban, Hermione reminisces... H/H. Rating for dark themes.
1. Diary Begins...

Diary of a Lost Girl Erin Normal Erin 23 151 2001-10-17T19:50:00Z 2001-10-18T23:33:00Z 3 1291 7361 61 14 9039 9.3821 Print 

Diary of a Lost Girl

by Love Gordon

            _" I dream in black and white_

_               I've long forgotten exactly who I am."_

                                                **_Spiderman_**_, Veruca Salt_

            There. I have marked it. I have spent a year in here, in the filthy depths, the very bowels of this great grey fortress. Everything is grey here. I feel colour-blind.

            Sometimes I think that this marking of the days is simply the last vestige of my humanity. For it's painful to look at them, these pitiful tally marks scratched into the dirt that covers my walls, organized into months, as is my way. But I also feel joy, a tiny speck of joy. Not very much, it's true; but it's almost heartening to know that I have retained enough of myself to pay attention to such trivial details as these, the hours that have passed. Though they no longer seem so many anymore.

            Occasionally, I will turn my head to look up at the sunrise, only to blink and find myself staring at the dull rays of sunset. It is not sleep that comes upon me at those times, but something greater and much more terrible. It is a blankness that is the beginnings of death. A death that sometimes is more alluring than not; it is so lonely here.

            They don't keep Dementors here anymore. Those beasts were moved to some other outpost before I came here. But Azkaban is stark and unyielding enough without them. It's still a wizard prison, really, though now those who were prisoners are the jailers. It's been called Voldemort's greatest coup.

            I'm not afraid to say his name anymore.

            Every day here, I repeat my name out loud, lest I forget it. I have forgotten so much already that repeating is less a task of purpose than one of silent resignation. Resignation to the fact that, one day, I will forget that last essential thing too.

            Would I answer to Hermione Granger now, if someone called me? I wonder.

~*~

                        If I get out of here… if… someday… I will live a life without regrets. There are too many things that I regret now for me to do otherwise.

            Mostly, I regret the hiding. I hid behind Platonic ideals of love when lightening surged through me every time our fingers brushed. I don't know how I survived that steady ache of longing I felt every day. Longing to kiss him, to touch him, to make him mine. I was sixteen when I last saw him. Harry. My love.

            We were at the Burrow that month… it was the summer before our sixth year. It was a summer both beautiful and frightening. For we were full of love, but… there was something terrible about those loves, which war had so strangely warped. Yes, war. With Voldemort.

            Ron was a man obsessed – with Cho Chang. And she was obsessed with him as well. Perhaps it was a window out of Cedric's death for her. I don't know. They were both less than human that summer; some animal instinct had taken hold of them. I'm sorry to say that I was, well, less than patient with them those last weeks, when Cho came to visit. It seemed they were anywhere and everywhere… there was no privacy in that house.

            Ginny was an ally… some of the time. She never seemed to notice Ron and Cho, snogging or worse, and oddly enough, they took pains not to disturb her. Perhaps they understood her enough to comprehend that her long, flowery letters to Neville Longbottom (a friend, rather than a beau) were just another form of that desperate love we all felt for each other, as friends, family, or lovers. Voldemort, in all his horrific glory, had risen, and nothing would ever be the same again.

            Perhaps we might never meet again under the many roofs of the Burrow.

            I doubt we ever will, now.

~*~

            There it goes again… time slipping through my fingers. I was thinking about that summer… yes, that final summer at the Burrow.

            Harry and I were… different from the others. I was more studious than ever, panicking over the newts as if they were two week, rather than two years, away. Maybe it never occurred to the others that I wasn't sure if I'd live that long. Everyone (even Ginny, a little) was annoyed with me by that fateful day we went in to London.

            Except Harry.

            Towards the end, near that final trip to Diagon Alley, he was almost manic-depressive, terrified and allured by what the future held. Maybe he knew more than the rest of us. It frightened me – and what could I do? I was lost. The rest were better off than me – at least they knew their own desires. I was trapped in a box I had made for myself, neatly labeled "Harry's Friend" in my own handwriting. I didn't help him – which breaks my heart. But what could I do?

            It made my heart beat faster just to look at him. I could hardly bear to be in the same room with him. Eventually, I came to fear what I most wanted – I never thought that he could ever feel the same about me.

            The day came when Harry and I went to London via Floo Powder. Not together – me behind him, not speaking. Unfortunately, had I been nervously chattering non-stop, perhaps Mrs. Weasley would have heard us. And informed us that the Floo Network was having some trouble that day.

            But we found out for ourselves when we emerged in Knockturn Alley.

~*~

            I'd never been in Knockturn Alley before. Perhaps there was a time when it was less dark, less dangerous looking. It was only late afternoon, but it seemed as if night had already fallen. We hadn't gone two steps towards Diagon Alley before we were abruptly accosted by two men in dark cloaks. I don't remember anything until when I woke in that dark room, with one lone shuttered window.

            We hadn't been chained or anything. I don't think they even knew who I was; just that they'd picked up Harry Potter and some girl in Knockturn Alley. As I later learned, they weren't even part of Voldemort inner circle of Death Eaters. (If they had been, I'm sure they'd have had the presence of mind to kill us before going out to eat.) There were some wards up on the room, though; I could sense it as soon as I woke. The place reeked of Dark magic. 

            Harry was out of it. Worse than out of it, actually, it took me several minutes to bring him 'round, and that was with the pitcher of water I conjured and dumped on his forehead. As I poured it, I recall thinking many complimentary thoughts about Dumbledore, who had lifted the ban on using magic on summer hols for fifth years and above, and Professor Flitwick, who had taught me a handy spell to make my wand invisible to anyone beside myself.

            "Harry, Harry!" I wailed. It's as clear as day to me now, even if I've forgotten how to make everything I ever learned in Potions. I shook him until his familiar green eyes peered blearily at me.

            "Hermione?" he said groggily. "Where are we?"

            "I don't know! We've been kidnapped." Now that he was awake, the anxiety I had been holding in the entire summer came to a head, and I burst into tears.

            To this day, I am still amazed by him. He was groggy, half-Stunned, and soaking wet, yet he knew enough to hold me while I cried. Any debts Harry ever owed me were repaid then. So when I had cried myself out, I turned my head up to his.

            And kissed him.

~*~

            If lightening had trickled through me when our fingers brushed, then this was something greater than a simple strand of fire, perhaps a blazing river of flame. I don't know how long it was until we broke apart for breath. Personally, I felt like I had been turned to jelly. I would have fallen over if Harry hadn't had a firm grip on my shoulder.

            "I think… I should get you out now," I said, my voice wobbling a bit.

            "What about you?" Harry asked. He sounded rather unsteady as well. Oh, poor Harry. I should never have kissed him, I realize that now. Perhaps it would have been easier for him to let go.

            "They're Dark magic wards, Harry." I raised my wand wand. "_Videritus_."

            The air shimmered with a yellow, pearly colour. A colour I was quite familiar with.

            "That's- that's-" he muttered.

            "The Sercaptivi curse," I answered. "Defense Against the Dark Arts extra credit last year. I think I can hold it long enough for you to get out through that window there."

            "Hermione!" Harry exclaimed. "Do you think I'd just leave you here?"

            I looked at my feet. "Harry, I have the wand, and there's no way I can hold the spell long enough to get both of us out. They'll kill you. They won't hurt me. Just _go_."

            Suddenly, a noise like that of a door being slammed echoed in the room.

            "Hermione-"

            "**_Go_**. _Vera forma_!"

            A crack echoed through the room, and the air glittered again, this time with a dark shade of fuchsia. So Harry kissed me, a quick sort of kiss that was over almost before it began, and went. His ankles were barely out of the window before I lost my grip on the spell and fell back on the bed, exhausted. An eerie yellow light lit the room.

            When I next woke, I was in a carriage, on the way to Azkaban. And my wand was gone.

~*~

            That is how I got here. And that is what has tormented my mind for every single hour of every single day, every single tally mark in the dirt on the wall, for the year I have been in here.


	2. The Book Closes...

Ending #4 – A Night To Remember by Love Gordon Melissa Jones Normal Erin 2 15 2001-11-12T21:14:00Z 2001-11-12T21:14:00Z 2 793 4523 37 9 5554 9.3821 0 0 

**Ending **

_            "This is a time for believing in fairy tales; _

_             One in which you are brought back to me."_

_                        **Wolf**, Veruca Salt_

            A girl of medium height with dark brown hair and green eyes perched on the end of her bed, clutching a worn, stained piece of parchment. She peered closely at it, her wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose… 

~*~

_            Dear Fawkes, it began, __I suppose you've always wondered how you got your name…_

I was four when my parents were murdered. I remember my mother as being beautiful; I remember the silky texture of her long brown hair, but I cannot remember her face. I don't have any photographs of my mother, though I do have one of my father. He was fourteen when it was taken, but seemed decades older. It's odd, that; I remember him being a lively person, swinging me around on my birthdays.

~*~

_            I don't know if you know that your mother was a prisoner of war in that long battle against Voldemort – but that must be many years ago, for you, the letter continued. __I know that if you are reading this now, he has finally won; for if your mother or I were alive, we would have told you our story before now. Know that we love you, have always loved you, and always will love you; love is a voyager beyond the bounds of time, life, and death._

~*~

            There weren't so many pictures of my mother; to my knowledge, the only ones in existence were burned up in the fire that destroyed my home and my parents' bodies. My mother's parents had died a year previously, and everything they had owned was lost as well. Voldemort killed all of them, my parents and grandparents. Only my mother could fight back; she killed him, but lost her life in the battle.

~*~

_            I fell in love with your mother a long time before I knew it, perhaps the day I met her, her father's long-dead voice said in his sprawling black writing,__ and my heart was broken the day she was captured. We were sixteen; we had discovered our love for each other perhaps five minutes before, and she was taken from me. I thought she was dead for two years. Then your aunt Ginny was captured and taken to Azkaban – and she found Hermione there, still alive._

_~*~_

            Hermione was my mother's name. She had a beautiful voice – it seemed that everything about her was the personification of loveliness, of serenity, of calm. On nights when it's rainy outside and I'm lying in bed, I remember her voice reading me fairy tales. She deserved a wealth of fairy tales, where she could be the princess and my father her champion. She deserved a happy ending.

~*~

_            Ginny escaped a few days later, and she came back and told me that Hermione was still alive. There was a frenzied week of Order of the Phoenix meetings – an organization that banded together to fight Voldemort – and then we made an attack on Azkaban, once our prison, and now Voldemort's finest fortress._

~*~

            I live with Ginny now, in a little cottage on the fringes of a little seaside village in Wales. She's never married – I think that perhaps she was in love with my father, but he didn't love her back the same way. They were always friends, though. The only picture of my father that I have ever seen sits on her mantel.

~*~

_            The Death Eaters there put up quite a fight, but in the end they went down in a blaze of fire and brimstone. Ashes and soot rained down on us, but we pressed on, freeing prisoners, until we came to the final wing, where your mother was. I made the rest of the team let me go in alone._

~*~

            He was a good person, Ginny tells me, the bravest man she ever knew. His name was Harry, and they called him The Boy Who Lived, because he had defeated Voldemort once when he was just a little baby. My father would read me stories too, some nights, and I never knew how courageous or famous or brave he was, but I knew how much he loved me. And that was all I ever needed to know about him.

~*~

_            I unlocked her cell, and at first she couldn't believe I was real; she thought I was a hallucination of some kind. She was thin, pale, and the most wonderful thing I had ever seen, because I loved her. You were conceived there, in Azkaban, out of the ashes and the fire, and you were a phoenix, because you were our love reborn. _

~*~

            Sometimes I dream of my parents returning to me, saving me from the nightmares of their deaths, drowning me in kisses and hugs. I have Ginny, and all my Weasley aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, but they aren't the same. They never will be.

~*~

_            We were married a few weeks later, and when you were born, we named you for Fawkes, our friend Dumbledore's phoenix, who had saved my life a time or two._

_            We love you, Fawkes. Happy sixteenth birthday._

            The letter was signed, _Harry Potter, your father, and then again, in the corner, in a neat, feminine hand, __Hermione Potter, your mother._

            Fawkes held the letter in her hand for a long moment before she dropped it into the fire. For from out of the ashes of her desire for parents, she would find something new. She would be a phoenix; she could learn.

_Thanks to everyone who reviewed this story at **SevenOfQuills**: you know who you are, and your kindness is much appreciated._

_There were four endings written for this story. This, Ending #04, was voted by the **SevenOfQuills** mailing list as their favourite. If you are interested in reading the other three endings, which remain list-exclusive, feel free to join us at:_

_http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SevenOfQuills/_

_Hugs to all – Love._


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